


abased

by anderfels



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drabble, Elvhen, Elvhen Language, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, Temple of Mythal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-04 11:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17303726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anderfels/pseuds/anderfels
Summary: When they first meet, she bows her head.“You know little,” he says, and sees the bristle in her backbone. She snaps upright.“Then tell me!”He wishes she had stayed bowed.





	abased

**Author's Note:**

> _abased_ \- reduced or lowered, as in rank, office, reputation, or estimation; humbled; degraded.
> 
> my lavellan's first meeting with abelas

 When they first meet, she bows her head.

Rue has never been devout. She sees her Gods like distant hills, proud and present, yet too far away to see clearly, too intangible to touch. She knows they are there, but does not feel them pressing upon her shoulders in the same way Leliana wears her god, feathered and hooded like a cloak, voice insistent as the cawing of the rookery crows. Her worship is whispered, grasped with trembling fingers, lips against the shaft of a shivering arrow. When the gangrene had suffocated the last of her blood, she prayed, and there was no one to beg to when her arm was broken away and burned.

She knows they are there. Somewhere.

Mythal’s temple is everything Deshanna would have dreamt of, everything she told them, even when her voice would creak and sway in the late evening, when the cold drew into her bones and she could no longer sew or weave her yarn, fingers gnarled and shaking. She wove stories of the elves before, of shining sanctuaries in the forgotten corners of the world, bejewelled in gold and bright mosaic.

This was not that. But it was close enough that Rue could not help her breath catching in her throat at the sight of the place, slumbering yet still so vibrant, so alive.  

She lets her fingers run across the balustrades, to where the ivy had broken through the pillars holding the ceiling aloft, suffocated the tiny gold tiles into pieces on the ground. There were flowers growing too, strangling the metalwork with stems and boughs of emerald green, blossoms sprouting in crooked patches of sunlight wherever they could steal it. It must have been beautiful once.

The air whirrs with ancient magic, alien and yet distantly familiar. It tingles on her skin like thousands of humming insects dancing over her cheekbones, through the tips of her fingers, through her bare toes and back into the earth. There’s singing, soundless, whispering at the edges of hearing, the voices of a thousand sleeping souls interlaced into the fabric of the fade. She twitches her ears and shuts her eyes, and all she sees is gold.

Abelas stands cold and sombre high above her, voice thick with the weight of sleep rudely awoken, and regards her as though he cannot see her clearly.  _You are too bright_ , Cole said, and she wonders if perhaps Abelas thinks so too, if perhaps her edges are too blurred, the colours running into each other like watered-down paint.

“Then you are…” she says, and he sees her mind working, clunking with the clumsiness of ignorance, the tips of her ears twitching as she concentrates. “Elvhen? From before Arlathan was destroyed by the Tevinter Imperium?”

It almost amuses him, but he doesn’t smile. She stumbles blindly in the forest, and gropes at what she can, and when she grasps a handful of sturdy branches to anchor herself, they shatter, and crumble to dust in her fingers. Foolish.

Dawning breaks across her face. She stares, rabbit-eyed, and fumbles with her realisation.

She bows to him then, and he is quiet.

“You know little,” he says, and sees the bristle in her backbone. She snaps upright.

“Then tell me!”

He wishes she had stayed bowed.

“Tell me!” she cries, and breaks from her ranks, staring wildly up at him, the knots of her hair tangling across her face like threads of ivy. “Please! These invaders are your enemies as surely as they are mine, and I swear to you they will not tread Mythal’s path so lightly. Corypheus will stop at nothing. He will see this temple razed, he will slaughter all of us!” She breathed, scowling at some unknown frustration. “And I will be  _fucked_  if I let that happen.”

He can hear the sadness in her, cracking underneath her skin like shattered pottery, an ancient and yellowed veneer. She carries it, desperate on both shoulders, and her back bows and strains beneath the weight. It snaps outward, her anger flaring, spitting like agitated firelight, and thirty sentinels suddenly train their arrows on her skull as she grabs for her bow.

“All of  _us_?” he asks, lazy, ancient. His voice drips like oozing honey, and he waves a nonchalant hand toward his archers. 

“Yes, us!” Rue clenches her hand. “The knowledge you must have is- I- The world has not been kind to us, our people could-”

Abelas chuckles.  “Our people? Elves?  _Dalish_? The shadows scampering in the forest, wearing their vallaslin, saying their prayers?” He laughs again, derisive, sharp like glass. “You are not my people,  _shemlen_.”  

She balks like a tethered animal. Two pairs of hands grab her at the elbow and she bites at her fury, fighting against the bars of her cage. She is screaming , cursing at him in jagged, disjointed Elven. In that moment, she is a wolf, a wild, feral thing, shorn of its matted fur and muzzled so tight there are cuts on her jaw from the strapping. They have chained a beast and prettied it, dressing it in silk and velvet to cover its cloak of mud, and now they expect it to dance on command. The wolf is a fierce and clever thing, but for its beauty, in its heart it is still a wolf, no matter if its teeth are removed.

Thirty arrows  _swip_  in their bowstrings, and Rue wrenches her arms forward, snatching her bow from her breast. Her arrow is trained on Abelas’ heart, and he has no doubt she would not miss.

He tilts his head. She breathes as though she is dying, snorting through flared nostrils, the tips of her ears erect and flushed pink, the colour of the blossoms strangling the temple walls. The two humans behind her are hissing, poised to bring her down, but her aim does not waver, and he sees the whites of her eyes, wondering if perhaps he wouldn’t mind to be killed be her hand.

“ _Atisha_ ,” he says. The archers move as one fluid unit, bows relaxed across their breastplates. He does not look away from Rue. “You bear Mythal’s vallaslin. Trespassers you are, but you have followed the rites of petition. You have shown respect to Her.”

Tension seems to flow from her like water over rocks. Her lip curls and she bares her teeth, but stands more upright than before, her bowstring sighing with its gentle release. She watches him, as he does her, and wonders if Deshanna ever dreamt of gold and bronze and alabaster, Mythal’s branches vivid in green.

“If these others are enemies of yours, we will aid you in destroying them. When this is done, you shall be permitted to leave, and never return.”

The humans take to chattering, anxious like chirping birds, but she does not seem to hear them. She stands out from the canvas, armour light and gilt in gold, adorned with leaves coaxed from the metal as though taking root within her and reaching for the light. There are beads strung in her hair and at her waist, filigree winding the lengths of her ears, and all gold and brass and burnished like the sun itself has curled its fingers about her, down to meet where the grass grew up her calves and the climbing ivy wrapped her feet.

She lowers her bow, replaces her arrow, and does not look away from him. “Ma serannas, Abelas,” she says, and bows her head.


End file.
